Patch 5.0.4 on Live Servers This Week
The Mists of Pandaria systems patch will be going live this week and it brings a lot of changes! Make sure your Background Downloader has downloaded the files so you aren't stuck waiting.

New Talent System
One of the biggest changes in this patch is the new talent system. This system removed the illusion of choice that was part of the old talent system by taking all of the mandatory talents and giving them to your class or specialization. Get your build ready with our new Talent Calculator on WoWDB!

Class Changes
Take a look at the updated skills on WoWDB, as well as the talents on our new Talent Calculator. Several of the forum members and mods have put together brief guides to help ease the transition to the new patch, so a big thanks to them!

Additional Character Slot
Patch 5.0.4 or the Mists of Pandaria release will add an 11th character slot!

AoE Looting
You will now be able to loot all of the corpses in an area around you with one click!

Scarlet Monastery Revamp
While we are waiting for the new level 90 Heroic versions of Scarlet Monastery, you can go and run the revamped lower level version! There are small new mechanics, changes, and new art that make the dungeon a much nicer experience than before.

Scholomance Revamp
While we are waiting for the new level 90 Heroic version of Scholomance, you can go and run the revamped lower level version! There are small new mechanics, changes, and new art that make the dungeon a much nicer experience than before.

Dungeon and Raid Valor Reward Changes

Instance

Cataclysm

Mists of Pandaria

Raid Finder (Dragon Soul)

250 x

250 x

Random Heroic Dungeon (Hour of Twilight / Cataclysm)

150 x

150 x

Random Dungeon (Cataclysm)

140 x

150 x

Random Dungeon (Mists of Pandaria)

N/A

60 x

Currency Conversion

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

The currency conversion coming with Mists of Pandaria is going to happen in three stages, and this is how we plan for it to progress:

With Patch 5.0.4 on August 28

Valor points will be converted to Justice points, and Conquest points will be converted to Honor points.

At this time, you will not be able to earn Justice points or Honor points if the conversion puts your total above the cap of 4000 per type.

The current Arena season will end.

Players will no longer be able to earn Valor or Conquest points (bosses will drop Justice, Arenas will be closed).

Items formerly purchasable for Valor/Conquest will be available for Justice/Honor.

Approximately two weeks after Patch 5.0.4

All Justice and Honor points that exceed the 4000 point caps will be converted to gold at the rate of 35 silver per Honor point and 47 silver per Justice point.

The cap of 4000 points per type will remain in-effect.

Account Wide Achievements
If you are curious if a specific achievement has account wide progress, check out the tooltip of the achievement on WoWDB.

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Most achievements are account-wide

This means you only earn the points once. If you have earned an achievement on one character, you can see it on all your characters. However, and this is important, you will still see the achievement toast (the pop-up notification) if a second or subsequent character completes the achievement. We think it’s still important to recognize milestones like reaching level 80, maxing out a profession, or killing a raid boss for the first time. It's fun to have everyone congratulate you when you get the toast. Nonetheless, this will just be a new character of yours completing the achievement that you’ve already earned on your account. You won’t double up on points.

Most criteria are not account-wide

If you start an achievement on one character, you can't then finish the achievement on another (there are exceptions, so please keep reading). We didn't think it made sense for one character to get level 60 and another to get level 20 and then see the "level 80" achievement toast. If you start to explore Thousand Needles on one character, you’ll probably want to finish that achievement on the same character.

Some achievements are "meta achievements."

These are achievements that require you to get other specific achievements. An infamous example is "What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been." These achievements generally ARE account-wide. If one character earned Noble Gardener and another character earned The Flame Warden, then your account would get Long Strange Trip. (Otherwise it would be weird: it would look as if you had the sub-achievements, but you wouldn't have the meta-achievement). Even though you need Explore Thousand Needles on one character, all of your characters can contribute to Explore Kalimdor.

A very few achievements are account-only.

There are two categories of account-only achievements. One is achievements that are not possible to earn on one character. If we made an achievement to level every class to level 90, it would be account-only. (I'm not sure we will, but it's a good example.) The other category are achievements that are just brutal to complete on one character (and you’d never want to do for multiples), such as 2500 daily quests or 250K honorable kills. In these cases, the cumulative work of all your characters on those criteria will count.

Account Wide Mounts
Many mounts are now account wide! This means you can use the mount on any character on your Battle.net account. If the last time you read about this was this blue post, fear not, all of those mounts were made account wide.

The major exceptions to the rule now are mounts that are restricted to your class or earned through rated PvP. Faction specific mounts are account wide, but you can only use them on characters with the correct faction.

If you are curious about a specific mount, take a look at the mounts list over on WoWDB!

Account Wide Pets

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

When Patch 5.0.4 goes live in the next week, we will be implementing systems that prepare characters for the Pet Battles system that is coming with World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, and bringing account-wide non-combat pets to the game. During the patching process, non-combat pets will be migrated among your characters, with the final result being all of your non-combat pets available to all of your characters. This initial adjustment to your catalog of pets includes several changes that are worth noting. Caging and trading caged pets are Mists of Pandaria functions. You'll see some mention of it after the 5.0.4 patch, but you won't be doing it until the expansion.

1. There will be a limit of 500 pets, per player, that can be carried going forward.

Players will be allowed to go over the 500 pet cap during the 5.0.4 migration.

The migration will not convert more than a total of 1500 pets for a player.

Unique pets will be merged, so there will not be more than one unique pet on an account.

2. Pets that can only be used by characters of the other faction will be greyed out.

Such pets can only be summoned by characters of the proper faction.

Examples include: Balloons, Moonkin Hatchlings.

There are certain pets that will not be account-wide. Examples include: Guild Page, Guild Herald, Argent Squire, Argent Gruntling.

3. Players should not see more than one of any unique pets. Examles include: Lil' KT, Murky, and Frosty.

4. All standard pets will be merged, with a limit of three per type. Players who currently have more than three of the same pet across their characters will see a total of three after the migration. Examples of standard pets: Orange Tabby Cat, Brown Prairie Dog, Crimson Whelpling.

Also that makes we wonder why they are going to do with the vanity PETS we have NOW in the guild bank, are they going to auto be caged or put in our spell book and once again if we have more than 3 of something we are going to lose them?
The key is to differentiate between pets that your characters have learned, and potential pets that you have as items in bags or banks or in the mail or on the AH.

Pets that your characters have learned are going to be merged, and will be account-wide thereafter. Pets that are items will be unaffected.

Will the pets really be merged across all of Battle.net as the press releases state or is it actually just within each individual license?
Yes. All of the characters on all three licenses will share all of the pets in that Battle.net Account.

Only one player per Battle.net account can be in a Pet Battle at a time. Any other players on that account who are logged-in will be able to summon the shared pets as companions, but will not be able to enter Pet Battles.

Will we each still be able to each do the quest lines and dailies? Using the same pets? Will we be able to level and battle with pets all at the same time in different parts of the world?
Yes and no. Daily Quests that are specific to Pet Battles will be limited to once per account. Other sorts of dailies will be unlimited, and there is no 25-daily-quest cap anymore.

I am on the verge of separating my licenses onto different battle.net accounts to make sure that we can participate fully. My son will be devastated if we can't battle each other!
You will have to separate licenses for two players on the same Battle.net account to enter into Pet Battles at the same time.

Simplified Buff and Debuff System

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We recently released an update to the Mists of Pandaria talent tree. Since the expansion is still in development, these updates represent a snapshot of where we are at any given moment and not a final design where we step back and say “Ladies and gentlemen, we have achieved perfection. Let us not change a thing.” If you’ve been playing the game for a while, you’ve probably realized by now that we never think we’ll hit perfection, and we probably never will.

One design that we haven’t focused on much yet is the plan for various group buffs and debuffs. Some specs have their buffs in place and some do not. Rather than trying to describe each omission, we thought we’d just dump the whole design on you here. As with the rest of the expansion’s systems, we’re not even in beta yet, so there’s plenty of time for things to change.

First, some underlying design goals, so you might understand where we’re coming from. Our main goals for group buffs are:

Make you feel more powerful when grouped with other players.

Give you lots of freedom to invite whom you want. This gets to be a problem when there are too many mandatory buffs spread out among too many specs. . .

…But not offer too many incentives to class stack. If you can achieve every buff with, say, only three players, then there might be a tendency to fill all of the other slots with whoever is best for a particular situation. Some class stacking is inevitable at the cutting-edge level, but to some extent, the players on the cutting edge of raiding enjoy extreme min-maxing. For the rest of us, we try to make sure you can finish all of the encounters without feeling like you need a huge roster of folks waiting in the wings for their one fight.

We tend to be more generous to DPS specs, since groups -- especially raids -- already have ample reasons to bring tanks and healers.

We generally don’t want a DPS spec to have to switch to a different spec in the same role just to bring a different buff. An example would be a Combat rogue who has to go Assassination just for a buff. In our experience, players are less likely to switch from a ranged to a melee DPS spec just for a buff, so DPS shaman and DPS druids might bring different buffs.

And finally some notes on the categories below:

The list only includes what we consider “traditional” buffs, such as Prayer of Fortitude. It doesn’t include utility like being great at snaring, battle rez, knock backs, high DPS while moving, and other mechanics. Those ultimately all factor into a raid or Battleground comp as well.

The matrix is a little more complex than it appears. A paladin, for example, can only offer one Blessing at a time, while a warrior can only do one shout at a time. You can’t assume one character can cover every buff or debuff listed below at the same time.

Some of these are active (you must cast them, like Prayer of Fortitude) while others are passive. Note that totems no longer bring passive buffs as a rule.

You’ll see several categories consolidated or gone. Bleeds no longer made sense, since everyone who cared about bleeds already buffed themselves. Magical resistance we just removed from the game, though there are some abilities that provide magical damage reduction.

We are still likely to use the design that hunters, especially Beastmaster hunters, can fill in for missing buffs or debuffs by using certain pets.

Item and Stats Changes
This patch makes some major changes to stats, such as ranged attacks being dodgeable, expertise becoming a rating, Spell resistance being removed, Resilience changes, and more. It also caused some changes to old items, especially PvP gear. You can see the new item stats on WoWDB.

New Druid Travel Form
The new Druid Travel form has some animations for dancing, grazing, cowering, sitting, sleeping, a mountspecial, and a walking animation. It replaces the old Cheetah travel form.

Armored Druid Forms Preview
Druids will have access to the Incarnation talent, which allows them to change into an armored version of the form for their spec.

New Warlock Pets
Warlocks finally got new pets, which are learned by the Grimoire of Supremacy talent. These pets are stronger, do 20% more damage, and replace your normal pets. The Fel Imp is a minor variation of the regular imp pet.

Pet Emotes

New Character Creation Preview Gear
Mists of Pandaria added some new higher res gear used when creating a new character. This is not the gear that your character will get when starting the game, but the gear that is used to show you what a higher level character will look like.

Cross-Realm Zones
Blizzard will be rolling this feature out beginning with a few realms at the launch of 5.0.4, and increasing until all realms are included for the release of Mists of Pandaria.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

In the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta, we’re introducing a new technology that will enable players to meet up and group with other players in under populated areas of the world such as low level zones or areas that other players may have outleveled or moved on from. This technology will allow players to form a group with other players from within a select pool of realms in order to quest just like they normally would while still allowing the social structures of their home realms to remain intact. We are also able to split over-populated zones.

For the live realms we will be matching realm types: PvP with PvP, PvE with PvE, RP-PvP with RP-PvP, and RP-PvE with RP-PvE. As always, we plan to keep an eye on constructive feedback while in testing of this new technology.

F.A.Q.

Q. Why cross-realm zones?
For many years now, the significant majority of the player population online at any given time has consisted mostly of characters at or near the level cap. This has resulted in an environment where characters that are leveling up experience a world that has fewer other players to interact with than what the world was designed for. Cross-realm zones give us the capability to ensure that level-up zones retain a population size that feels more like the high level areas of the game, leading to a more fun play experience for characters of all levels.

Q. How do cross-realm zones work?
When you’re in a zone that is set as a ‘cross-realm zone’ you’ll notice that in addition to the players you’d ordinarily see from your realm, you’ll also see (and be able to play with) players from other realms. This will happen seamlessly, and players will be able to group and quest as they normally would with players from their own realm.
Q. How will this work on boats or zeppelins?
Usually transitions will occur on area boundaries (think moving from Darkshore to Ashenvale).

Q. Can I form groups with the people I meet in the zone?
Yes! You can group and talk to others within the cross-server zone normally though trading will be restricted much as it is within raids, dungeons, or battlegrounds.

Q. Will my cross-realm group be disbanded if we move on to an adjacent zone together, like from Goldshire to Westfall or from Thousand Needles to Feralas?
Much like how cross-realm groups currently work, your party won’t be disbanded when you move through different zones, though if you’re not in the same home realm, you won’t be able to see each other if you’re in separate zone instances.

Q. Will I be able to group with my friends?
Yes, you will be able to group with your Real ID friends, provided they are within the same faction. The functionality works the same as it does for cross-realm dungeons, raids, or Battlegrounds.

Q. What level range do my friends and I have to be within in order to group?
There is no restriction on level ranges. You’ll be able to group with anyone you would normally be able to.

Q. Can I go into main capital cities while grouped with others?
Capital cities and areas with regularly high populations will not be set as cross-server areas/zones so you will not be able to enter into the same instance of a city as someone who is from a different realm.

Q. Will I be able to trade with others I meet?
Trading restrictions are in place much the same as they are in cross-realm dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds.

Q. How is group loot handled?
Group looting will function the same as it would with any group you would create through normal play.

Q. Who will I be playing with?
You’ll be able to interact with players from within a select pool of realms which will make it possible to run into a player in Redridge that you already ran into within Westfall.

Q. What areas will be shared?
This can vary from realm to realm and relies on how densely populated (or underpopulated) an area is. Capital cities and areas with regularly high populations will not be eligible for area sharing.

Q. What about resources or gathering nodes, will those be shared too?
Resources and nodes will be available to all parties within the shared area the same as always. We will be keeping a close eye on the impact of area sharing and should an area become too populated, we are capable of adjusting how many realms are able to connect to a shared area.
Q. Does this mean that Auction Houses will be merged?
No, when any player access an Auction House, they will be only able to access their home realm’s Auction House.
Q. What about zones that are already overpopulated, like new race starting zones?
With this technology, we can also flag zones to allow for more than one copy of that zone per realm. Players on that realm will be split among those copies in order to alleviate problems due to overpopulation. Players won’t normally see or interact with those on a different instance of their zone, although joining a party will relocate all party members to a single instance of that zone.

Q. How will this work for PvP vs. PvE realms? Will these realm types be shared?
No. Realm types will be matched with like realm types. So if you’re on a PvE realm, you’ll only be matched with other PvE realms. The same rules will apply for matching RP realm types and will be restricted to matching RP-PvP with RP-PvP and RP-PvE with RP-PvE. We plan to keep an eye on constructive feedback while testing this new technology.

Q. How will RID groups work? Which realm type would we play on?
If you group up with somebody from a different rule type (via RealID for example) and go into a cross-realm zone you’ll be on the ruleset for that player’s realm type. So, if you’re on a PvP realm and a friend joins your group from a PvE realm and enters a cross-realm zone, the group will be in one of the PvP realm clusters and will use the PvP realm ruleset.

Q: I really don't see any reason to group with others when everything is so easy to do at the lower levels. All these other people will be doing is killing my mobs and taking my resources.
The game is specifically designed with variable respawns, and huge influxes of players on launches. Having very few people in a zone is actually not what the game is supposed to be.

Q: Will be have to zone to every zone from now on then?
No, it's as seamless as it is today.

PvP Season 11 Ends

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Arena and Rated Battleground Season 11 is scheduled to end on Wednesday, August 29. At that point, we will determine who is eligible for the end-of-season rewards, a process that should take approximately one week. It's very important for players who feel that they may be eligible for Arena titles and/or the Cataclysmic Gladiator’s Twilight Drake to refrain from transferring their characters to another realm or faction until after Season 11 ends. The awarding of Season 11 titles and mounts will occur approximately 1 week after the season ends.

At the end of the season, Conquest Points will be converted to Honor Points, possibly exceeding the 4,000 point Honor cap. There will be no cap on Honor until Mists of Pandaria is released on September 25. At that time, any Honor accrued above the 4,000-point cap will be converted into gold at a rate of 35 silver per point.

All Season 11 items will cost Honor Points (equivalent to their previous Conquest Point cost) when the season ends, with the exception of any items with rating requirements attached. These items will no longer be available for purchase.

The next Arena and Rated Battleground season will begin for level-90 players approximately one week after Mists of Pandaria launches. During the break between seasons, all Rated Battleground and Arena matches will be unavailable. Matchmaking (MMR), Team, and Personal Ratings will all be wiped when Season 12 begins.

Heroic Spine Changes After Mists of Pandaria Pre-Patch

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

So I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but is anything being done to make heroic spine beatable after the nerf to dispels that are going out? Considering how rapidly you have to dispel on it, it seems impossible with the new dispell reductions.
When the pre-Mists patch goes live, Blood Corruption on the Heroic Spine of Deathwing encounter will transform into the positive type after a single dispel.

Somewhat related, successfully dispelling Wrack on Sinestra will reset the cooldown of the caster's dispel ability, keeping the gameplay there unchanged.

Character Creation Screens
These screens are only used during the Character Creation process, not Character Selection.

Character Selection Screens

New Mounts and Pets Interface

Misc Interface Changes

Dungeon Journal Expansion
The Dungeon Journal has been expanded to cover all of the old dungeons.

New Maps
If you still get lost in Caverns of Time, things are about to get much better. This patch also brings many, many maps for areas that don't show up on zone maps very well, such as caves, underground areas, and starter zones.

Graphical Changes
Patch 5.0.4 will bring us an improved lighting system, SSAO support, and slightly improved reflections. Many of these changes are hard to see without actually playing the game!

If you don't have a higher end computer, you may have to turn down some settings, especially once Mists of Pandaria and the new zones are released. If this sounds like an excuse to upgrade some hardware, head over to our Computer Forum.

The lighting system is more dynamic now, with flickering lights actually changing the light levels on the scene around them. SSAO adds shadows between objects that are very close together, making lighting look slightly more realistic. Mounts and players now appear in the reflections.

Updated Addons
Many addon authors have been hard at work updating their addons for Patch 5.0.4 and Mists of Pandaria. You can find the complete list on Curse! Now might be a good time to take advantage of the Curse Client to update your addons, and the one click update for Premium users! If you are already using Curse Client, be sure to check this box in the options to help populate WoWDB with data!

I looked quickly and didn't see any problem, can you give me an example?

It was my error, I just removed my post to avoid the confusion - I incorrectly assumed "all" meant "all-for-that specialization" - as Wowhead / Armory displays it. It seems "all" on this talent calculator literally has every spell it's possible to get as a Druid.